The Bratva Beast’s Broken Virgin (Rusnak Bratva #8)

Chapter 1 – Sebastian

The morning is quiet.

Not the delicate quiet that feels temporary, but the heavy, deliberate silence that settles when I lock the world outside and refuse to let it breathe near me. The kind of quiet I can work inside.

My private studio sits atop an abandoned penthouse floor in Chicago, suspended above the city like a secret no one was meant to discover. The glass walls are long gone, the rooms stripped bare. What’s left is mine—an art sanctuary carved out of concrete and isolation.

Sheets of vellum litter the steel tables.

Charcoal dust clings to my fingertips like a second skin, darkening the creases of my hands, staining me until even I can’t tell where I end and the work begins.

Forged Rembrandts stare back at me from every surface—studies broken down to their bones, signatures dissected and reassembled with surgical precision.

Contracts lie among them, peeled apart line by line, their lies waiting to be made beautiful.

Art and crime.

Truth and imitation.

The same discipline. Different outcomes.

I stand before the easel, shirtless, shoulders loose, charcoal sliding across vellum with practiced certainty. I don’t sketch anymore. I build. Every line exists in my head before my hand commits to it.

The face forming beneath my fingers isn’t anyone specific. Not yet.

Sharp cheekbones. A strong nose. A mouth held in restraint rather than softness.

I drag my thumb through the shadow beneath the jaw, smudging it into something gentler than I intended. I curse under my breath and darken it again. Too harsh. I erase part of it, dissatisfied.

The work calms me.

Blurs the world into silence.

Here, there are no brothers watching me with measuring eyes. No Rusnak expectations tightening around my throat. No men asking me to make blood money look legitimate. Here, I control what exists and what doesn’t.

The sharp beep of the security system cuts through the quiet.

I pause, charcoal still smeared across my fingers, and turn my head toward the video intercom mounted on the opposite wall. The elevator release light is blinking—someone is waiting below, requesting access.

My frown forms slowly.

No one comes here.

This place isn’t an address. It’s a boundary. My brothers know better than to show up unannounced, and everyone else doesn’t even know this floor exists. I don’t host. I don’t entertain. I don’t have friends lingering at the edges of my life.

Sometimes I disappear into this studio for weeks at a time. I paint. I work. I sleep on the couch. No one calls. No one looks for me.

That’s the point.

I walk toward the intercom anyway, bare feet silent against the concrete, irritation tightening between my shoulders. I stop in front of the screen and look up into the camera feed.

Lev.

An older cousin, but with how tight-knit we are, I call him my brother.

He stands in the elevator, peering up at the lens like he expects it to bite him. Blond hair falls carelessly over his forehead, sharp against the severity of his face. His eyes are icy and impatient.

I cross my arms over my chest and stare at him, unmoving.

I don’t reach for the release.

I let him wait.

“Seb, I know you can see and hear me,” Lev says through the intercom. “Let me up.”

“I’m not expecting anyone,” I answer, my voice flat and grouchy.

My brothers don’t disturb me unless it’s urgent. And in the Rusnak family, “urgent” usually means something capable of ruining my entire week. I really don’t want to let him up.

“What do you want?”

“Seb.” He frowns up at the camera, irritation sharpening his features.

I roll my eyes and hit the button.

The elevator hums as it ascends. I turn away from the intercom and walk back to my easel, charcoal already waiting between my fingers. The doors slide open behind me just as I resume painting, dragging a line across the vellum like nothing has changed.

I hear his footsteps, but I don’t look up.

He stops a few feet behind me.

Without turning, I rotate the easel slightly, angling the canvas away so he can’t see it.

“What do you want?” I ask again.

“Is that a way to greet your brother?”

I ignore him.

Lev moves past me toward the minibar. Glass clinks softly. He pours two fingers of something dark into a pair of tumblers. When he comes back, I’m lowering myself onto the couch, charcoal still smeared across my hands.

He offers me one.

My fingers stain the glass as I take it.

“Why are you here?” I mumble, watching him knock back his drink in one smooth swallow.

“Drink first.”

The words tighten something in my chest.

Alarm bells start ringing. Lev doesn’t ease into bad news. He braces people for impact. If he wants me to drink first, whatever he’s about to say is catastrophic.

I don’t argue.

I knock back the drink. It burns its way down my throat, sharp and unforgiving.

Lev watches me closely.

Then he says, “You’re getting married. It’s a strategic alliance.”

The room tilts.

“You can’t refuse.”

I lift my gaze to Lev, irritation slicing through me sharp enough to upset my balance.

Arranged marriages aren’t new in our world, but they’re usually political theater—ceremonial chains fastened around my cousins.

Not me. Not the reclusive artist. Not the Forger Prince who prefers ink to people and shadows to ceremony.

I have never been a negotiable asset.

“What do you mean I can’t refuse?” I ask.

Lev’s expression hardens. There’s no humor there. No brotherly indulgence. Just the weight of authority he never bothers pretending he doesn’t wield.

“The council wants the alliance,” he says. “And you’re the only suitable match.”

The words settle into my chest like something cold and deliberate.

I lean back on the couch, crossing my ink-stained fingers behind my head, arranging my body into a posture of calm I don’t feel. If I look unbothered long enough, maybe the reality will follow.

“Who is she?” I ask.

I expect a name that means nothing. Some Bratva daughter from another city. An oligarch’s heiress with manicured nails and hollow eyes. A woman raised to smile through negotiations and disappear once the ink dries.

“Sienna,” he says. “Sienna Roth.”

The name hits me like a fracture I never set.

It detonates inside my skull like a buried land mine someone stepped on.

For one long, suffocating moment, I forget how to breathe.

That name—

That voice—

That mouth—

That fire—

That night—

It all slams into me so violently it feels like a punch to the chest.

Sienna Roth.

I haven’t spoken her name in five years.

I haven’t allowed myself to think about it.

Haven’t permitted the memory to surface—the copper-red hair spilling down her bare back, the way her lips trembled when desire overtook her, the laugh that melted into a moan she tried and failed to swallow against my throat.

I buried her like a sin.

And now she’s back.

Not as a memory.

Not as a consequence.

Not as a regret.

But as my bride.

A bitter taste crawls up my throat.

I drop my gaze to the half-finished sketch a few feet away, desperate for something solid, something real, something that isn’t her name echoing in my head like a curse.

That’s when I realize it.

What I’ve been drawing all along.

It’s her.

Even when I didn’t know it yet.

The charcoal lines blur as my vision shifts, the abstraction snapping into focus. Her silhouette. Her profile. The curve of her mouth—the smile I once coaxed out of her before I betrayed her with a ruthlessness she never saw coming.

My fingers curl slowly, nails biting into my skin.

I don’t look back at Lev.

Because if I do, he’ll see it.

He’ll see the one truth I’ve spent five years forging over, erasing, burying beneath layers of discipline and ink.

Sienna Roth was never finished with me.

And apparently, neither was fate.

I remember my betrayal with brutal clarity.

The way she looked at me after she published that review—after she praised my work, elevated my name, believed I had wanted her.

Chosen her. Cared for her. All while she was nothing more than a strategic seduction to me.

A lie I used to manipulate an influential critic into reshaping my trajectory in a dangerous underground art world.

She gave me softness.

I gave her ruin.

And then I walked away without a backward glance.

I force my breathing to slow, to settle back into something that resembles control.

“Tell the council I’m not marrying her,” I say.

Lev doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t need to. The steel beneath his tone is unmistakable. “You don’t have a choice. This alliance secures two territories and neutralizes a threat. You will wed her.”

“I won’t.”

“You will.”

I push to my feet, heat climbing beneath my skin. “Lev, I won’t. You can’t change that. Even the Pakhan can’t change that. There’s nothing any of you can do to change my mind.”

Silence descends between us.

“She accepted already,” Lev says finally.

My jaw locks.

She accepted.

The words scrape against something raw inside me.

Why?

The question doesn’t leave my mouth, but it burns all the same.

Revenge? Desperation? Obligation?

Or maybe she wants access—to the Rusnak name, to money, to power—

No.

Sienna Roth has never been that kind of woman.

I know her. Even after five damned years, I know her. She is fire wrapped in civility. Intellect hidden behind lipstick. Rebellion tucked beneath designer white. She doesn’t bow. She doesn’t barter herself for politics or protection.

If she accepted this marriage…there’s a reason.

And I don’t like the weight that settles in my gut as possibilities begin to form.

Lev reaches into his coat, pulls out a thick, unassuming folder, then places it on the table between us. The sound it makes—soft and final—lands harder than a bullet.

“Her family signed the agreement,” he says. “The wedding contracts are drafted. There will be no discussion.”

I don’t touch the folder.

I can’t.

My fingers tingle, my nervous system firing with a volatile mix of dread, fascination, and guilt I despise with every fiber of my being. The paper might as well be electrified. Or cursed.

I hate being cornered.

Hate being dragged back into a past I’ve spent half a decade outrunning.

Hate the idea that Sienna Roth—of all women—will be thrust back into my orbit, tethered to me by law, by name, by fate.

I hate it.

And I hate even more that something dark and hungry inside me doesn’t recoil from the idea.

The fight drained out of me the moment Lev said her name, and I don’t understand why. I don’t understand how one woman—one memory—can dismantle years of discipline in seconds.

Why the fuck is that?

Lev doesn’t wait for my response. His footsteps fade across the concrete, measured and unhurried, and then the elevator doors slide shut behind him.

The hum of its descent vibrates faintly through the floor.

I don’t look up.

I keep my gaze fixed on the folder.

On the proof that Sienna Roth is coming back into my life.

Not as a choice.

But as my wife.

After what feels like an eternity, I reach for the folder and flip it open.

A photograph is clipped inside.

Sienna.

Present-day Sienna.

Older. Sharper. Even more devastating.

Her copper hair is longer now, styled sleek and deliberate. Her mouth is painted a ruthless red, the kind of color that isn’t meant to invite—it’s meant to warn. Her eyes—always bright, always penetrating—hold something colder now.

Something I recognize instantly.

Vengeance.

An unfamiliar heat crawls beneath my skin, slow and treacherous.

She’s coming for me.

She agreed to marry me.

And she isn’t the girl I abandoned.

She’s a woman now. A woman who wants blood.

I close the folder with careful precision, my pulse settling into something steady. Something dangerous. Something inevitable.

“So be it,” I murmur into the quiet.

Let her come.

I’ll meet her at the altar.

And this time….

I won’t run.

I’m still staring at her photograph when my phone rings.

I don’t look away.

The screen lights up on the counter, vibrating insistently. It rings and rings until it stops, the silence afterward thick and expectant. My gaze never leaves her face. The sharp mouth. The cool eyes. The woman she’s become.

I close the folder and slide it aside, then move to the minibar and pour myself another drink. The amber liquid sloshes against the glass. I take one slow sip.

The phone rings again.

I scoff softly and pick it up. It’s Dimitri. Another one of my cousins. Brother.

“What.”

“Seb.” Dimitri sighs on the other end. “I take it Lev has told you.”

“So you all ganged up against me and came up with this bloody idea?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

There’s a pause. A careful one.

“It had to be done,” Dimitri says. “What are you going to do? I know you won’t accept this so easily.”

I swirl the drink, watching the liquid climb the sides of the glass. “What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing stupid.”

Another sip.

“I’ll marry her.”

Silence.

Dimitri doesn’t speak immediately, and when he does, his voice is sharper. More alert. “Why?”

I scoff. “I thought you said it was the council’s decision. If that’s the case, why are you asking me?”

“Because,” he says slowly, “you won’t accept this without a fight. You never have. You agreeing this quickly means there’s something in it for you.”

I don’t answer.

The quiet stretches.

Then I hear him inhale sharply. “Wait.”

I close my eyes, the ghost of Sienna’s smile burning behind my lids.

“You and Sienna know each other?” Dimitri asks.

The question hangs between us like a blade.

“No,” I immediately deny.

“You’re lying,” he says. “You know her.”

I roll my eyes, irritation flaring. “Did you call to mock me?”

A soft laugh drifts through the line. “Are you okay, though?”

“Yeah.” I take another sip of vodka. “I’ve got work to do. I’ll call you later.”

“Seb—”

“Goodbye.”

I end the call before he can finish.

The studio falls silent again.

I walk back to the canvas, glass still in my hand, and stop in front of it. The charcoal lines stare back at me, undeniable now.

Sienna.

I don’t erase it. I don’t pretend it’s anything else.

Maybe I’m ready.

Maybe I’m not.

But there’s no going back now.

Not from this.